


smooth out your creases

by Kintsu



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project, Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 00:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16800253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kintsu/pseuds/Kintsu
Summary: Chika Takami has never been good enough. Others succeed, Chika folds paper airplanes.





	smooth out your creases

It was one of her sisters who showed her how to fold them. It had been so long ago, so long that she now didn’t remember which sister it was, but an older pair of patient hands had covered hers and carefully creased the paper into a lopsided, vaguely jet-shaped triangle. Chika had been ecstatic. 

Her sister - or was it her mother - had cupped her hands and whispered in her ear. “You can send it anywhere, my friends used to pass notes with this. If you practice, you’ll always be able to throw it where it needs to go.”

The plane hadn’t gone far, but that hadn’t stopped her from running all the way over to You’s to show her.

Only to find out that You already knew how to fold them.

* * *

Writing was hard. 

Reading was harder.

Nothing Chika did seemed to make any difference. Kanji she should know molded itself into odd twists, katakana swapped with hiragana. Reading through a paragraph took hours, and the only thing she was left with at the end was a headache. Nothing stuck.

The calligraphy lessons helped a little bit. Slow strokes helped shape words. But on a timed test there was no time for careful brushstrokes. Her mechanical pencil moved quickly, and wrongly.

Another homework assignment returned, slashed through with red. Chika didn’t want to see it. 

But what she didn’t want to see even more were her parents faces - no doubt lined with helpless concern. 

It wasn’t her plan. She just wanted to get rid of it. 

Chika folded another plane, and kickstarted a fleet.

Her work flew out the window.

* * *

“Maybe you should try origami?” Her mother peeked through the doorway, no doubt checking to see if Chika was trying to keep on top of her middle school workload. “You could try making something a bit more interesting than airplanes.”

“Probably.” Chika replied.

Planes suited her.

* * *

It finally clicked. After years of watching, Chika was finally good at something.

Softball was her way out of mediocrity. With an arm perfected by paper airplane throws, her pitches snapped straight and true.

“You should have tried this earlier,” You and Kanan laughed. “It suits you.”

Chika grinned back, a streak of mud painted over her number. She fit somewhere.

  
  
  
  
  


For months not a single plane sailed from her fingertips. 

  
  
  
  


Two weeks after the high school tryout results came out, she went back and tore the sheet of paper off the wall. She folded over all the happy names into a perfect paper plane.

* * *

Her open schoolbag lay open at her feet. A stack of unfolded aircrafts spilled out.

Chika let one fly.

“That’s bad for the environment, you know.” You said.

* * *

It was a lot easier uncrumpling someone else's issues than it was her own. Maybe that’s why Chika liked talking to Riko. Riko’s fingers folded melodies out of piano keys. It was a lot cooler than planes. 

Chika’s hands twitched. It was rare she got to unfold something and be proud of it.

Riko looked at her sometimes, when she thought Chika wasn’t looking back.

* * *

Chika had fallen asleep early. An odd glow woke her.

There was a figure out on the sand, hair whipping in the wind.

Chika would recognize that back anywhere.

* * *

The sunset stained beach prickled with paper airplanes. Chika vaulted the seawall, skidding a bit on the sand to make her way over to Riko.

“Where did you get all of these?”

“I found them. Around.”

Riko knelt down and picked up a tattered plane, unfolding each worn edge. “Have you ever tried opening them?”

Chika blinked, that was her own name - misspelled - at the top of the paper. Writing scrawled awkwardly, that horrible grade spiderwebbed over her incorrect answers. This must be from grade school. How could she have that?

“Wh- give that back!” Desperate hands caught only air. Riko spun on one heel, unfolding the almost forgotten assignment. Chika snatched at it again, “That’s private!”

“Is it? You sent them off though, to where anyone could pick them up.”

“That doesn’t mean I wanted anyone to read them!” Chika’s fingers ached. Don’t look at that, she wanted to scream.

Riko inspected the sheet. “You know, you really only got points off for spelling.” She tossed the creased sheet aside and plucked another plane from the sand.

“Who are all these names?”

This was too much deal with, “What do you want with this?”

“Ah… I recognize some of these. Is this the softball team?”

Chika felt that didn’t need an answer, after all Riko wasn’t giving her one.

If Riko sensed that, she didn’t say anything.

“Why always airplanes?” She bent and picked another one. “I asked You, she had no idea. She seemed to think you were just fooling around.”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do.”

Yeah, she did.

“This is a lot harder than it looks, you make it look so easy. You’re really talented at it.”

Chika laughed bitterly, “At what? Folding airplanes?”

Riko smiled, a tired sort of twitch. One that didn’t quite reach her eyes - no that wasn’t right. It did, it’s just that it was a sad smile.

“No, at unfolding people.”

“Uh-”

“I can understand maybe, why you don’t want anyone to do it for you. It’s not fun looking at everything you covered up - let alone showing it to someone else.”

Riko grasped another plane, drawing it from the sand. She sat down, pulling Chika down next to her.

“I won’t judge you, you know. You’ve already seen all of my tossed aside secrets. You know this.”

She did.

“I’m not awake, am I?”

Riko smiled at Chika. 

“Why is it always airplanes Chika?”

* * *

Chika could have talked about it at the bus stop, but she didn’t. Of course, if it had been that easy, she would have talked about it to anyone years ago.

Instead she waited until it was just the two of them after school, pulling a confused Riko onto the beach. Chika’s fingers ached for a sheet of paper, to fold one more outbound flight. 

There wasn’t time for that now.

The landing strip of beach would soon be full up with returning inbound voyagers.

Chika inhaled. A deep breath that would carry her, just as it had carried so many planes away from their frustrated pilot.

“Riko, can I tell you something?”

**Author's Note:**

> This has been bouncing around in my head for a while. It's mostly born out of how underutilized, yet how cool the paper airplane metaphor in season 2 was. This is my take on it.   
> I don't know how much this really counts as chikariko, but it is for me. Your mileage may vary.  
> This is a bit more experimental than other things I've written, but I like it. It was a lot of fun to write, and after spending so long tackling mostly Riko's insecurities, it was fun to give Chika more of a point of view. 
> 
> Sorry for the radio silence for so long. I know that I've really only posted a revision since finishing kibis. I've been doing a lot of travelling and work. I was lucky enough to get to see aqours live in the tokyo dome! Which was fun, but boy going back to work after that was hard. With the holidays coming up I should have more free time, so expect more fics!


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